Complete
by skyspireskit3
Summary: The Dark Knight- Late at night, the masks come off. One-shot, BrucexJoker.


For the third time in a fanfic, I am using a "free-verse" style similar to the one used by Toby Barlow in his novel _Sharp Teeth_. It hasn't made me very popular, but I love using it.  
There's nothing really graphic here, the rating is just to be safe.

Disclaimer: I own nothing

* * *

It's only when their faces are bare  
naked and exposed, and yet  
more barred off than ever by what  
might be called their _true_ masks,  
the convenient faces of two men who  
do not exist.  
Two men who disappeared into the night with the aftersmoke  
of the bloody loss of innocence

or so they prefer to think.  
In this life  
there's no strength to carry extra baggage.

A rustle at the curtains, the creak of the balcony door, and the cavernous master bedroom of Wayne Manor  
doesn't seem so empty any more.

Here, there is "Bruce Wayne"  
who is as surely dead as if the bullets  
that took the keepers of his heart  
shattered the bones of his skull instead,  
and from his ashes came a great black phoenix  
whose shadow keeps the city's evil at bay.

Here, there is a man  
who has no other name  
his face wiped clean of the smothering makeup  
that deepens his cracks.  
Bruce can't get over  
just how young  
this man truly is. He must have been handsome before  
a blade walked over his face.  
Batman doesn't give a damn about those scars,  
(it's hard to  
when the person wearing them  
holds a bus of screaming children about to erupt into fire)  
but "Bruce" is curious. But he's given up asking.  
The story changes every time.  
"Oh, I looked in the mirror one morning and I didn't like what I saw, so I decided to jazz it up a bit."  
Is it possible  
the Joker himself doesn't know?

It all started that one night  
while Bruce stood  
looking out at the rain and feeling the world  
crushing down on his shoulders  
and he saw  
the Joker standing on the balcony,  
rain running off his green hair in sheets  
that scarred, twisted mouth curled  
into a smile like a gashed throat.  
"Hello, Bruce. Or should I say…_Batman_?"  
Bruce stood  
numb and frozen  
and that smile disappeared. "It's kind of _wet_ out here, so if I could…?"  
Moving without feeling, Bruce stepped aside  
and let him in. Gave him a towel. The Joker rubbed it through his sodden hair, and when he came up again  
his makeup was nearly off. Without it,  
he looked almost human.  
Almost.  
Bruce asked, "How?" and he got that damned chuckle,  
"C'mon, how long did you really think you could hide?"

They don't pretend they don't know  
how it happened.  
They both know damn well how and  
at the same time  
neither of them has a clue.  
But it's okay.  
To each, the human-faced being lying beside him  
is not the beast who is always at his throat.  
Maybe it's the adrenaline of their battles that brings this on, maybe it's loneliness,  
or maybe even something more, but the mere notion of _that_ one  
is a hot coal they won't go near.

Without his heavy rags, the Joker is muscled but cheetah-lean  
so white he almost burns  
like a cold winter star.  
He has other scars, many of them, coiling over  
his back, sides, feet  
like the winding paths of snakes through a desert.  
Some look like slashes from knifes, others more likely from belt buckles, and some  
Bruce can't even guess at.  
But he's memorized every one with his lips, tongue, fingers  
and the Joker knows every one of his.

Every time, the Joker seems surprised  
all over again  
when Bruce doesn't hurt him  
he's not used to pleasure but  
he's learning to like it.  
They explore each other, kissing the wounds  
old and new, some  
they themselves carved into each other  
as recently as that day, or the day before.  
Sweat, grinding teeth, skin boiling against skin  
frantic nails digging into the muscles of the other's back.  
They cover their mouths, muffle their cries  
so Alfred doesn't hear.  
(Once he almost caught them  
when he came up too early with the breakfast tray.  
The Joker, no time to grab clothes, had to jump out the balcony door and wait there  
naked, broad daylight  
for a quarter of an hour, until Bruce finally got Alfred to look away  
long enough to slip the clothes out the door.)

Twice, afterward, Bruce has woken up  
to the Joker crying  
white shoulders shaking, sobs silent into the pillow  
lost in nightmares Bruce knows  
he could never imagine.  
He reaches to touch him and  
it's the only times  
he's ever seen the Joker flinch from anything.  
Bruce holds him, the Joker doesn't wake up  
just curls into Bruce's chest like a needy child, his tears  
like chips of ice only half-melted.

It's surprisingly often that one wakes up  
and finds the other still there.  
But they are never prepared for it.  
It feels more normal when they wake up alone  
leaving the other  
to don what is both his disguise and his real self  
and the battle begins  
all over again.

The routine is familiar.  
When they do wake up together, the Joker springs from bed  
and stands naked doing stretches, reaching and contorting  
his long body until the bones crack.  
The first time,  
he felt Bruce's eyes on the back of his neck, and muttered,  
"Relax, I'm not gonna come back here an' firebomb the place."  
The name of his pain is Batman, not Bruce Wayne...asshole snob though the guy is. "Speakin' of whom, next time you see 'im, tell him to stop throwin' all his money around so much. It gets kinda old."  
Bruce sighed, picked up his robe off the floor  
(it was all he was wearing when the Joker arrived). "You know, most of that money he gives to charity."  
The Joker stopped in mid-stretch, gave him a long look. "Don't try to humanize idiots around me. It doesn't work."

Maybe, just maybe  
something of this, these moments  
somehow seep into  
the real world  
despite every effort to keep them buried.  
Gunfire, explosions, screams and blood, the sight of the other  
at the other end of the burning street  
is familiar as the night and yet  
they're strangers meeting for the first time  
again.

They complete each other  
in more ways than one  
and that  
they can never escape.  
Maybe that,  
is the real reason that  
when the Batman finally does, and oh he will  
break his One Rule  
it won't be the Joker's neckbone ground to powder in his hands,  
and though the Joker's knives will always draw blood  
they will never sink in that fatal last inch.

Mortal enemies by day and night  
and then  
sometimes something else  
are they really destined to do this forever?  
The Joker seems to think so  
and he laughs, while Bruce  
isn't sure what to think anymore, so he tries not to.

* * *

Ugh. Sorry for all that OOC-ness. I tried my best.

Please review.


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